


love like that (it lights up the sky)

by lonelyghosts



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alpha Timeline (Homestuck), Beta Timeline (Homestuck), Doomed Timelines, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Grimdark, Sprites, for hexy! a jaderose pioneer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-27 07:03:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20403637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelyghosts/pseuds/lonelyghosts
Summary: There's a thousand versions of them, and in each story they are holding hands.





	love like that (it lights up the sky)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hexaS](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hexaS/gifts).

> this is for hexy synodicatalyst hexaes, jaderose pioneer and jade rights activist! happy birthday hexy! jaderose rights!!!

In any world, in any universe, there is something that draws them together.

* * *

They are two women separated by time and circumstance. 

Rose Lalonde is twenty two when she starts seeing things in bathrooms, vomiting into the sink as images flash behind her eyes- a mother with a martini, a boy with shades holding a sword in the Houston sun, bruised and bloody, a blue-eyed boy in blue robes who is laughing in the middle of a tornado, a girl with bright green eyes and black hair and round glasses and the brightest bucktooth smile. A game. A sun. A beginning. She thinks maybe she's living the wrong life, and vomits again.

Rose Lalonde is thirty two and knows one day, years in the future, she will have a daughter that she will never meet. She has a brother- of a sort. Dave is not blood, and they were not raised together. Half of that feels wrong. Half of that feels right.

Rebellion comes to her like fire, like words on her tongue, something in her soul. She wants to rip this world apart. She wants to save it.

There is one person she can go to. The witch's lost daughter lives on the other side of the world. An island. Rose Lalonde goes to learn at the feet of the Condesce's Cain.

Jade English is fifty-one and tired. She is the daughter of a monster and she is ashamed of it. In her younger days she sniped from rooftops and poisoned leaders and caused no end of trouble, but half a decade ago they put a bullet in her side and now she can't do that work anymore. She does what she can- more subtle work. Skaianet does what it can, and that's something, but not enough.

Which is when Rose Lalonde comes to the island with revolution singing in her blood.

"I will be your disciple," Rose says to the woman in a labcoat with a scarred side and too many white streaks for a woman so young. "I will do your work."

Jade teaches her everything she knows, and then what she doesn't, and then in the back of the laboratory Rose holds Jade's hands and speaks of a world that might have been.

"I think I might have loved you," she tells Jade, eyes violet and violent, "and I love you now. And I will keep you safe."

But there is only so long she can stay. Rose comes back for visits when she's able, but they are few and far between. Jade takes comfort in the havoc that Rose and Dave wreak on her behalf, in what they do for her. 

Then Jake comes, and Jade raises him. Rose comes by when he's four, barely old enough to remember her, and pulls Jade into the laboratory of their first kiss, and says things are getting worse.

"Keep yourself safe for me, love," Rose asks, begs, and Jade laughs. 

"They won't bother themselves with an old woman like me!"

They do, and when Rose hears, she screams and cries and gets so drunk and obscene it trends on Twitter for two days straight, and no one knows why. 

At the end, when she and Dave face the Batterwitch, knowing that despite everything this is the end, the Condesce smiles and says, "You know, I'm sorry about Jade, guppy, but it had to be done."

Rose screams and jumps forward, needles sharpened to a deadly point in her hands. When the trident pierces her chest, it almost feels like a blessing.

* * *

In the dark of the doomed timeline, there are only two of them. 

Rose speaks in tongues, and Jade barks upon occasion, but they understand one another. There is blood on their clothes. Neither of them remembers whose it is. 

In this life, the Condesce took them both, twisted Rose into what she had overcome three years prior, turned Jade inside out, and then sicced them on the world. And after that, neither remembers much except the screaming, and the blood.

Dave tried to tell Jade it hadn't been him who'd hurt her. Jade screamed at him, so raw and angry that it shook the cosmos. Alone, for three years, in the quiet, a boy who had used her and tossed her aside, who had never listened to her, who had never seen her as a human being. They had just seen her as little girl Jade, so small and unworthy. "THAT WAS YOU! YOU HURT ME!" Her claws go through his skin so easily. She didn't know it would be that quick. 

Rose cried when she saw Roxy, mistook her for the dead woman who'd walked their house with martinis and who had never, ever, known how to love Rose in a way she understood. Who had made Rose into a girl who saw alcohol and knew it as the only connection she had to her dead mother. Who thought of every single gift as a bargaining chip. Roxy had tried to hug her when she saw Rose, and that had been a mistake.

Rose's skin made Roxy bleed, made brain matter seep out of her ears. Rose hadn't meant to.

The others tried to come after them. The Condesce was utterly furious when she saw the crumpled blue figure. But Rose is the patron of the Furthest Ring now, and when she speaks she is Oglogoth, she is Fluthlu, she is Nrub'yiglith, she is the Condesce's lusus Gl'bgolyb. The others shudder and collapse when she screams.

Now, in the dark that is the aftermath, they hold hands. Rose pets Jade's ears. Jade plays with the wisps of shadow that steam off Rose's skin, licks the black ectoplasm of Rose's mouth, and they are together in the darkness. 

This is all they need. 

* * *

Neither of them are the 'real' version of themselves.

Jadesprose sees Jadesprite and feels so much pity it nearly breaks her pink heart. Jadesprite is soft, and sad, and so hurt. She cries at small things, when she can't do something right the first time, when she can't remember the right thing. 

"Oh, sweetheart," Jasprose purrs sad and soft, "it's all right, love, darling, honey." She uses every pet name she can think of. This girl, so broken. Who lost everything and everyone. Jasprose will help her.

They sit at a tea table and eat scones. Jadesprite speaks haltingly, and Jasprose does not push her. When Jadesprite talks about being yelled at by Jade, Jasprose's heart twists, and she is reminded of the way that Rose looked at her as if embarrassed. As if Rose wasn't a whole separate person. As if Jasprose was just an embodiment of Rose's dumb teenage self. 

There are things that Jasprose remembers that Rose wouldn't, because it was from a different time. They are different people. Is it so hard for them to have empathy? For Jade Harley to understand that Jadesprite is hurting, for Rose Lalonde that Jasprose has been through things of her own that she would never understand? 

"She's wrong," Jasprose declares. "Just because she's hurting doesn't mean you don't get the right to. What happened to you was awful, it hurt you. And you have every right to be upset about it. You can cry all you want, just let it all out."

Jadesprite looks at Jasprose softly, with a sad smile, and Jasprose wants nothing more than to kiss her. She remembers loving Jade, remembers being thirteen and hopeless over the girl who typed Rose heart emojis and talked about Squiddles and Warrior Cats and who made the most g-dawful puns. She remembers knowing Jade would never love her back, that Jade was into Dave, bottling it up and never letting it out, crying some nights into the pillow. Jasprose remembers being so in love with Jade her thirteen year old body filled with sun and shone. She remembers wanting more than anything to say that she loved Rose back.

Jasprose looks at Jadesprite and falls in love all over again.

"You know," Jadesprite's voice is tenuous, hesitant. "When we were children... you were so cool. And I remember being so... hopelessly in love with you then. And when I look at you now... I just..."

Jasprose's mouth drops open. Jadesprite hangs her head. 

"I just thought..."

Jasprose swoops across the table and kisses Jadesprite, hard, her arms wrapped around her, one hand in Jade's long and coarse hair, before breaking away. Jadesprite gapes at her, blushing, and then beams.

"Oh, kitten," Jasprose purrs, her heart so full she wants to burst. "I loved you too. I love you too."

* * *

Jade Harley swoops through the dark of paradox space, alone, the guardian of the emptiness. 

Back home, everyone is safe. Everyone has someone. Everyone is okay. Jake and Dirk made up, Jane and Calliope and Roxy are making cookies together and running a private detective agency, Dave and Karkat have each other, John has his father back, Terezi's off searching for Vriska, and Rose and Kanaya...

Jade's heart clenches. 

It wasn't like Rose had ever known back then. They were children. Rose could not have known the way that Jade had loved her, quiet and wanting and hidden, the way love had made Jade feel bigger than the whole world. She couldn't have known the way that Jade had pined for her over the three years alone, how she'd hoped that Rose would See her, would save her somehow. She'd hoped seeing Rose for the first time would have made up for some of the hurting. 

And then there had been the Condesce, and she had been so _angry_, and she had wanted nothing more than to make the world understand what she'd gone through-

Seeing Rose and Kanaya hold hands, even after the grimness had been dispelled from her body, had been enough to make her want to weep.

So she's not meant for anyone! That's okay. Jade is used to being alone. It's practically her natural state of being at this point. She's alone, and she's in the dark, and that's who she is, that's what she _gets _for being the person she is-

Someone taps her on the shoulder and it startles Jade so much that she comes very near to punching Jasprose in the face.

"Why the long face, Jade?" The catsprite asks, smile bright and neon pink. "You look awfully down! What are you doing all the way out here?"

Jade sighs. "I'm protecting Earth C. There might be asteroids, or a threat of some kind-"

Jasprose stares at her. "Wait, so you've been out here this whole time? Ever since it was over? It's been two years! Jade, you must be so lonely!"

She shrugs. "I'm used to it."

The look on Jasprose's face is hard to face directly, so Jade turns her gaze out to the dark. "I've been alone my whole life, Jasprose. Ever since my grandpa died. I'm okay being alone! And it's not like anyone even really needs me down there!"

Her voice wavers just a little when she says it, and Jasprose looks heartbroken. "Jade, no! You have people who love you! Who care about you! They must miss you so much! Did you even tell them where you were going? How long you'd be gone?"

It's a struggle to keep her words even. "They don't miss me. It's fine, Jasprose. They're all okay. I mean, it's not like I'm that _important_-"

Jasprose grabs her by the face. Her paws are white and soft and it takes everything in Jade's power not to lean into the touch. She missed this, she missed being touched in a way that wasn't fighting comets or asteroids or her friends, back when she was grimbark, and from the look on Jasprose's face, she knows it too.

"Jade... why don't you think people care about you?" 

She laughs and it's so fucking bitter, she's given up pretending. "Because why would they! I was alone for three years and they didn't see me! They didn't miss me! I was never important! I'm weak, and I'm stupid, and I'm useless, and I hurt people! Why would anyone care about me?"

Jasprose is shaking her head, eyes wide and violet. "Jade, I missed you! I'm Rose! Don't you remember, part of me is Rose? I have her memories- from a different timeline- I'm her, I was her, and in the life I lived, I missed you! For g-d's sake, Jade, I was in love with you! And I still am!"

Jade freezes and stares open-mouthed, and Jasprose shrugs. "You're such a wonderful person, Jade, you're not worthless or stupid or weak. How could I not love you? It doesn't matter," she adds, seeing Jade's shocked face. "I gave up on you loving me back a long time ago, you don't need to say anything. What matters is that you are the best person I know, and you don't have to be alone anymore. It's over, okay? It's over."

She wants to say a million things to that, like _I loved you too_ or _do you mean it _or _why didn't you tell me _but instead something in her seems to break, and she's crying into Jasprose's shirt and making a big mess as she does it, holding on to Jasprose and weeping desperately because she's not alone. Someone is here.

"Come on, Jade," Jasprose whispers into her ear, "let's go home."

* * *

Rose tells Jade she loves her for the first time when it's all over.

Jade is crying, and her hands are wet with blood and sweat. So many of them didn't make it. She wonders if she'd been stronger, would it have mattered? Could she have broken free of the curse the Condesce put on her, could she have saved them-

"Stop," Rose puts a hand on Jade's shoulder. "Don't blame yourself."

"It's my fault, Rose," Jade whispers, voice hoarse from screaming- in pain, in anguish, in sorrow, in anger. They have lost so much. "If I had just been better-"

"No," Rose says, and hugs Jade around the waist. "It was you who saved us. If you hadn't come and helped then we would have lost everyone. You saved us, and I missed you, and I'm not letting you blame yourself."

Jade shakes her head, still distracted by the blood on Rose's cheek, and Rose can't look at Jade being this broken by something any longer. She leans up and kisses Jade firmly on the mouth.

She goes rigid and then melts into it, kissing Rose like she's drowning, like if she lets go Rose will be gone again. Rose thinks that maybe Jade thinks all this is just a dream, that she's still stuck in the ship, alone, and kisses harder at the thought, clutching Jade back just as hard. She won't leave Jade to be abandoned and alone ever again.

When they come up for air, Rose reaches up and brushes a strand of hair out of Jade's eyes and smiles, sad and tremulous but determined. "I love you, Jade Harley, and I won't let you hate yourself."

Jade cries, then, and Rose does too.

* * *

In a thousand worlds, in a million lifetimes, there is something about them that draws the other in. They are two rebellious women fighting for a better world, they're two girls twisted by the dark, they're two spare versions of themselves who never forgot each other, they're a girl in the lonely dark and the girl who won't let her go, they're two girls in the aftermath saying, _it's not your fault._

They are Jade and Rose and every variation of the two and they are in love.

It's that simple. It's as simple as this: two girls, who fell in love at thirteen, blessed by the stars and blessed by the sun, celestial, the both of them.

They don't know how not to love one another. And they never will. 


End file.
